Zenfone 3s Max Review: Whopping 5000 mAh battery a Highlight!

Asus unveiled an upgraded device, the Zenfone 3s Max today for India. This device is priced at 14999 and will be available starting today. The Zenfone 3S max is a Dual sim device with options for Micro SD card slot. The USP of this device is its whopping 5000 mAh battery. The phone does have some weight but it doesn’t feel bulky at all. In this article, let’s review the Asus ZenFone 3S Max and see how it performs.

The Zenfone 3S Max is an all-metal phone with a 5.5/5.2 inch HD display (depends on the variant you choose) topped with a 2.5D contoured glass. Under the hood, the phone is powered by MediaTek 64-bit MT6750 octa-core SoC coupled with at 1.5GHz. It has 32GB on board storage with 3GB of RAM. In addition to an expandable memory of up to 64GB.

While using the phone, I could feel a lack of optimisation in the RAM department. The app loads are very slow and there is a occasional frame drops when you play high graphic intense game. However, at the range this device is considered, it makes the best use of the hardware and gives you the value for money!

The display is a 5.2 screen which supports a HD ready (720p) display. The screen is protected by Corning Glass 4. The viewing angles of the phone is pretty good. The text are decently sharp and images are a tad high saturated. The contrast is pretty neat too; means the black and whites look good. I really wished if this had a 1080p display.

On the rear side, the phone adds a matte feel back panel to the phone which gives it a good grip and also adds to a style.

The Zenfone 3S Max like the earlier edition, has a 13MP Primary camera sensor on the rear which is assisted by dual LED flash and a PDAF auto focus. The front camera has a 5MP sensor. The camera app comes with a lot of filters and features. There are various modes, such as: Auto mode, Manual mode, HDR mode, Beautification, Super Resolution, QR Code scanner, Low light mode, Night Capture mode, Depth of Field mode, Selfie Mode (Rear camera), GIF Animation, Panorama, Miniature, Time Rewind, Smart Remove, Slow Motion and Time Lapse. Also, the camera does record full HD videos.

Here are some of the pictures we shot. The camera performs pretty well in bright outdoor; the colours are quite impressive too. However, in a moderate lighting conditions, the pictures aren’t exposed right. Although, the laser auto focus helps in quick focus, I noticed that the pictures weren’t very sharp when shot in low light conditions.

One of the strongest feature of this phone is its battery. With 5000 mAh, its too good at its segment. The lithium-polymer battery offers a good 2-3 days of usage and has a standby time of 38 days, which is pretty impressive. The Power Saver mode helps users manage and extend the battery life even more. With five battery modes and two smart switches that users can configure to make their own battery optimisation settings and help the battery last even longer. However, the phone takes a long time to charge and thats definitely a pain. The wall charger is a 5.2V at 1Amp charger. It takes a good 5-6 hours to charge from 0 to 100. Wish, Asus had included a fast charger in it. The battery on the ZenFone can also work as a power bank and share the power with other devices with the OTG cable that comes along with the box.

Zenfone 3S Max runs on ZenUI 3.0 OS which offers a multi-window mode for better multitasking, revamped settings menu, and a lot more features. This Zenfone brings in all the goodness of the Android Nougat with ZenUI skin.The phone also wakes up on double-tap and there are options to clear the cache memory right from the multi-tasking window. There are few more tweaks which are made in the OS level that helps in better memory management and app loads; however, ZenUI still has a long way to go. There is still a lot of scope of improvement in the area of RAM management and optimisation.

Given the price, the device is worth the buck if you are too concerned on the battery life. The battery and reverse charging are definitely a neat addition. However, if you are looking at a good all around package, you may also wanna consider either the Redmi Note 4 or the Honor 6X.